


this and you, like a bell, like a song

by bazanite



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M, Melancholy, Touch-Starved, making it work, sometimes they play hockey (I lied they never play hockey)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 05:10:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14371599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazanite/pseuds/bazanite
Summary: Kent Parson disappears on a Tuesday.





	this and you, like a bell, like a song

**Author's Note:**

> This is some weird, experimental, unedited stream of consciousness stuff that I wrote over the course of two days because I was depressed and didn't want to write the kinky ot3 (that's coming, though). ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Kent Parson disappears on a Tuesday. 

The Aces lose a game to the Avalanche on a Tuesday. Kent sits in his stall and puts his head in his hands and Jeff watches him from across the room on a Tuesday. Kent gets up, puts his gear in his bag and drives home on a Tuesday and doesn't show up for practice the next morning.

Technically, the papers say that Kent Parson disappears on a Wednesday. The investigators show up on a Thursday. By Friday, _breach of contract_ echos in the halls.

Kent Parson disappears on a Tuesday, but he took his cat. He took some clothes, took his car, took a few thousand dollars of cash out of the bank.

 _That's a man that doesn't want to be found_ , the investigator says when Jeff yells. She puts a hand on Jeff's arm. You'd think they'd teach detectives to keep pity out of their eyes. 

Jeff pulls on his skates and stares at Kent's empty stall. 

Life goes on, but Jeff gets stuck. 

His magic freaks out after a while, which is how he realizes he's grieving. He keeps trying to pull moisture out of the Vegas air without noticing and when that doesn't work, he accidentally cracks the water line running to his house and his yard floods overnight. The city comes out and hands him a three thousand dollar bill because the crack happens on his property; Jeff closes the door and puts his face in his hands and screams. 

Jeff's sick of waiting for Kent to come back, so he sits down at his kitchen table and starts working. He calls everybody he knows who knows Kent, but they're all on the same page Jeff is. Kent's parents have been dead for years, and he has no immediate family to speak of. 

He gets Jack Zimmerman's number through the NHL phone tree. Jack Zimmerman is mournful and sufficiently contrite, but clearly itches to get off the phone, has closed the Kent Parson volume of his own encyclopedia. Jeff wants to fly to Providence and strangle him. 

"If he's not at his grandma's cabin then I have no idea where he is," Jack tells him before they hang up, and Jeff nearly throws the phone across his kitchen.

They'd looked into the cabin when Jeff told them about it, but Kent didn't have any other properties registered in his name. It was his grandmother's or something, legally owned by her trust now. 

If only he knew where that fucking cabin was. If only to rule it out.

Jeff surges to his feet and goes to his desk. There's a box in the bottom drawer that's full of letters people have sent him over the years, and sometimes when he feels sad he'll take them out and read them again. Some of the letters have worn corners with how often he's stroked his thumb over the edges. There are the ones he goes back to time and time again, definitely: the one from his brother while he was waiting in the hospital after Thom was born is probably his favorite. It's full of hope. 

There are a couple from Kent, who Jeff tried in vain to get into letter writing in the early years after Kent was drafted. They're meandering and stilted, like Kent's never quite sure what to say, but Jeff likes those too. They're very true to character. Eventually he stopped writing altogether. When Jeff called him on it, he'd rolled his eyes and said _I tell you everything I'd write you a letter about anyway_.

The one he's looking for is written on recycled paper and came in a warm brown envelope. Kent wrote it over bye week a couple years ago. Jeff can't believe he didn't think of this sooner.

The envelope is textured under his fingers, and when Jeff pulls it out of the box, the return address is faded a little but still legible. 

_Bastian, Virginia_ , the address says and Jeff presses it to his lips in a silent prayer. 

. . .

Kent's standing on the porch when Jeff pulls up. The house is built on the top of a low mountain, and it looks down over its twisting access road. He's probably been watching Jeff's car approach for a mile. 

It's February in southwest Virginia, and Kent's wearing a tee shirt. When Jeff climbs the stairs and wraps his arms around him, Kent's skin is bitterly cold. 

"I was so worried you came here to kill yourself," Jeff whispers into the soft flesh of Kent's neck. "I didn't know what I'd find."

Kent rubs a hand over Jeff's back, quietly reassuring. How weird it is that Jeff's here, taking comfort, when Kent's the one who ran in the first place. 

"Are you okay?" he asks when he finally pulls back and Kent regards him with dead eyes. "What's going on? Please," he begs.

It strikes him that his desperation is oddly selfish, that Kent is the one who's hurting, and Jeff's standing on his front porch leaking his emotions all over the place. 

"It's cold," Kent says. "Come inside." 

The inside of the cabin is barely warmer than the outside, and Jeff makes a passing assessment of the thermostat when they pass it in the hall. 67°. Not warm, but not the temperature it really is, which doesn't make any sense. Jeff's breath is dry and creaky in his lungs.

The hall leads into an open living space. There are plants on the window sill in the kitchen, wilted and brown, and the crystals that lay nestled in their soil look dull and worn. Everything feels still and tight and dead. When Jeff goes to look out the back windows at the pond behind the cabin, it's still and entirely frozen. Stuck. 

Something is very, very wrong here. 

Kent's magic is dying. 

Kent's always been a better witch than Jeff. He doesn't mean that out of any sort of jealousy or ill-will; Kent's genetic line is just shot full with magic. His grandparents served as Council elders for four terms, something that hadn't been heard of before or since, and his mother—well. His mother had the kind of magic that was unsafe from the start. 

Magic like Kent's doesn't just quietly _die_. Magic like Kent's implodes and ignites. Magic like Kent's consumes. 

Jeff touches the leaves of the pothos crawling along the kitchen windowsill. There's so much water pooled in the bottom that it takes Jeff's breath away. His affinity for plants is secondary, not like Kent's, but when he closes his eyes and listens, the pothos cries. 

"Do you want something to drink?" Kent asks, in that weird dead voice that's starting to shake Jeff down to his toes. 

"Come home," he says, instead. He picks up the pothos and its weak, curling vines droop in his arms. "What the fuck is going on with you? Come _home_." 

Kent takes the kettle from its place on top of the refrigerator and puts it on the stove. He cocks his head at Jeff. "Where?" 

"There's no water in that," Jeff points out, and Kent looks at the kettle for a minute before taking it over to the sink to fill it. Jeff pulls water out of the pothos and it drips down the side of its clay pot, puddling on the floor. Kent turns on the burner. "Home. Vegas. Come home." 

Kent leans against the stove and folds his arms over his chest. He looks at Jeff with something like contempt, and it makes Jeff's stomach curl. 

"You really want me to come back." It's a question, despite how it sounds. At least, Jeff hopes it's a question.

"What the fuck, yes." The plant in his arms is perking up a little. It's not an instantaneous thing; it needs to be reminded that it's safe to thrive. But it's not waterlogged anymore, and the pointed tips of its leaves relax and unfurl minutely. 

"Fine," Kent says, and Jeff's spirits lift, start soaring, but then: "You have two days to convince me."

Fine. Jeff's done harder shit in less time. He takes out his phone and makes his calls, the team he's taking a healthy scratch for the next two games. If they don't like it, tough shit. Kent watches him. Jeff's starting to get really freaked out by how dull his eyes look, all grey and flat. 

"Where's Kit?" he asks when he hangs up, and Kent lifts a shoulder in a shrug. Panic seizes Jeff. He puts the pothos on the kitchen table and goes to look for her. She's stretched out on Kent's bed in a back room, and when Jeff runs his hand over her back, her head lolls. She doesn't make a sound, alive but subdued. Empty. 

"Fuck, Kent, look at her." Kent's standing in the door watching him. "What the hell is going on with you?" 

Kent shrugs again, and this time Jeff crosses the room and shakes him, desperate to find a little life here. He breathes out a sigh of relief when he gets it; Kent bats his hands away from his shoulders and steps back. 

"I don't want to play hockey anymore," he says, and whatever air Jeff found gets sucked out of him again. "I'm done. I'm just fucking done." 

"Just because we've been losing—" Jeff starts. 

"I know how to handle loss," Kent snaps, and he laughs, dry and hollow. "It's how the game works. I've only been doing it my whole life, Jeff _rey_. My whole fucking life." 

It's a strange thing, to be happy to see someone so angry. There's a little pink in Kent's cheeks and he looks away from Jeff, flushed. Embarrassed? It doesn't matter. There's life in Kent, too. 

Jeff's fingers shake a little when he reaches out to touch Kent's shoulder this time. "Did you come here to die?" he whispers. "Because that's what it looks like." 

There are more plants in bedroom. The ivy in the window sill is papery and covered with dust. No amount of water or magic could save it. Not now, not a week ago. The ivy is a ruinous memory. 

Kent steps back, out of Jeff's touch. "No," he says, but it rings hollow like a lie. "I just needed to get away."

On the bed, Kit stretches out long, then curls around herself.

Two days, Jeff thinks. He's going to need a plan.

He brings his bag in from the car and puts it in the spare room. The plants in this room aren't as bad as the ones in the living area, safe with Kent's inattention. He draws a little water out of the calathea, puts it into the peace lily. They whisper their thanks to him and sigh. 

The plants in the main room are harder. They've been here for a long time, soaking with Kent's grandmother's magic. He tries to touch them and they rebuff them, wary and fearful of his strangeness. The crystals in their soil hum, rigid and closed, tuned to a wavelength Jeff doesn't understand. Energy work is hard for Jeff on a good day. This is not for him to grow. 

Kent watches him, silent. There are dark circles under his eyes, and when Jeff looks up and catches him watching, Kent stretches out on the couch and feigns sleep. 

Jeff brushes his fingers over the waxy red leaves of the croton, touches the rough amber in its pot. _Please let me help,_ he whispers to it. He's not sure how much the plant understands of love, but it's curious now. It does not turn away when Jeff strokes its leaves.

When Kent stirs, pulled from what did not start as a real sleep but very quickly evolved, Jeff's frying a pair of pale, pink salmon fillets on the stove.

"Where'd you get those?" Kent asks, voice rough. He blinks sleep from his eyes and watches Jeff over the arm of the couch. 

"They were in your freezer. There's broccoli too." Frozen, cooked down into a casserole covered with stale bread crumbs. "Will you eat?"

Kent eyes him, wary, but sits up and rubs a hand over his face. "Alright."

After dinner, Kent sits in his chair and moves restlessly. His fingers tap an imperceptible rhythm against his knee. His eyes dart around the room. 

"Go on," Jeff says. "You don't have to entertain me."

Kent bolts for his bedroom, eager to hide. At least he doesn't slam the door. 

Jeff pulls on his boots and heavy jacket and leaves the house from the back door. The plants were one thing, but the pond is sick. A massive system on the brink of collapse. It shocks Jeff, the closer he gets. Water like this needs air to breathe, to keep everything moving; the pond is suffocating under a thick sheet of ice. He finds a downed limb and uses it to pokes at the surface.

His initial thought was right: there's something dead and rotting in there. The water's trying, desperately holding on to the bacteria necessary to break it down, but the ice is smothering it. 

_I'll help,_ he tells it. _Hold on._

 _Hurry_ , it begs, wordlessly. 

Jeff does not understand time like the pond does. It's dying, but slow. This is not work for tonight. It will be fine for now. 

Jeff goes back into the house. 

"What's wrong with it?" Kent says, emerged and nervously curious, standing in the doorway of his room.

"You can't tell?" Jeff asks, genuinely surprised. Kent should be able to feel it, feel all of it. He's a prime witch, concerned with the forces of everything. It's the stuff of life, the things stars are born from. Prime was there when the universe was born, and it will be there long after Kent and Jeff and every other breathing thing is done with it. 

"I know it's… sick. But I can't tell." Kent rubs his hands together, presses a thumb into the soft spot in the middle of the other palm. "I haven't really been able to feel it for a while," he says.

Jeff aches for him. He wants to go to Kent, put his arms around him, find the thing inside of him that's strangled and poisonous and cut it out. 

He doesn't know how to tell Kent that all of this is his fault. The dying house plants, the dead crystals, the rotting pond. Jeff wants to breathe life back into him. When a witch of Kent's caliber lets go, so does everything he touches. When Kent comes back, so will the spaces around him. 

"I came here because I thought—it always made me feel better. When I visited my grandparents, it was always so alive." Kent, like Jeff, like every witch in the world, knows that winter is not the same as dying. Life exists under the frost and the quiet, waiting to be found.

"It just needs some care," Jeff says, and when Kent lifts his eyes they're not quite so dull anymore. "I'll show you what we need to do. I'll help." 

. . . 

Jeff wakes Kent up in the morning. Kit's tucked up against his chest, purring.

"Come on," Jeff says, his hand still on Kent's shoulder. "We're going to need an axe." 

They drive in silence to the nearest hardware store, 45 minutes down the road. 

"Sorry," Kent says, halfway there. "I forgot how far it is." 

"Don't worry about it." Jeff watches him out of the corner of his eye. Kent looks small, so unlike the giant Jeff knows. "I like it. Sometimes it's better to do things slow." 

Kent uncurls, just a little, and stretches his legs out.

"Have you told anyone where I am?" he asks on the way back. They're stopped at the one light between the cabin and the hardware store. It's been red for two minutes and nobody's coming through the intersection. 

Jeff turns in his seat to look at him. 

"No," he says, slowly. "I told Christine that I found you, though." Christine, Kent's agent. Christine, the only other person on the face of the planet that seemed just as fucked up about Kent's disappearance as Jeff. "That you weren't dead."

"That's good, that's—" Kent runs his hand through his hair and turns to look out the window, fist pressed against his mouth. "Thanks." It comes out as a mumble around his hand.

Jeff takes his foot off the break and drives. He looks at the light in the rearview mirror was they pull away from the intersection. It still doesn't turn green by the time Jeff loses sight of it.

When they get home, they stand at the edge of the pond and hack at the ice together. It's a lot of hard work, but eventually they get a corner free and the ice dips and bobs whenever Jeff shoves at it.

"We're going to have to go in there to get the thing out, aren't we?" Kent says, peering over the edge of the bank. "It's got to be below zero."

Jeff just smiles at him. 

"Oh," Kent says, startled. "Sometimes I forget. In the dessert." 

The water rumbles, excited to be free. It can feel the air again and takes a deep breath. The colonies of microscopic life that have been trapped under the surface titter excitedly. 

The pond moves and Jeff sighs. He sinks into it, in his head, and falls away from his body. It always feels so good to do this, so right after being so parched in Nevada. The heartbeat of the pond thuds in him, next to his own, deep and quiet. 

When he opens his eyes again, water's coated his boots, weirdly viscous. Kent's stepped back out of it but left Jeff alone, let him work. 

There's a dead doe at his feet. It's unnaturally black, oily and obsidian. Sometimes the earth spits things up like this, twisted and rotten, a bolus of foul magic. Purging. 

The water sings to him, thankful and free.

"What do we do with it?" Kent asks.

Jeff puts his hands on his hips and stares down at the carcass. "That's more your thing than mine."

Kent's silent for a minute, then nods once, resolute. 

"Yeah, okay." 

What Kent does is old magic. Old magic craves structure, form and rhythm. It's not so simple as willing something out of the water. Old magic likes doorways, so they go down to the water again at dusk, right before the sun dips behind the mountains. 

The cellar in Kent's cabin is stocked with sundries, some of which Jeff could name, most of which he can't. Kent makes him carry a flour sack full of salt down to the edge of the pond, and sets Jeff with making the circle. Kent takes the salt from him and uses a burning stick to draw a triangle around the doe on the west side of the circle, west where the sun sets, west where things return to sleep. 

Kent stands in the middle of the circle and looks lost. Jeff knows without speaking what he's missing.

"Wait here," he says, and jogs up the hill to the cabin. He goes to the croton and asks it for the amber in its soil. 

_For helping?_ the plant feels at him. 

Yes _._

When Jeff touches the rough, unpolished surface of the stone, it shivers at him with excited delight. 

He takes it back down to the lake and when Kent holds out his hand, Jeff tucks it into his palm, wraps Kent's fingers around the stone. He whispers a silent prayer. 

Kent stares. Jeff knows that the amber is warm now, alive and excited, waiting to shine. Kent's hand shakes when he pulls it back. He clutches it to his chest and pulls the prime into it, into them, fills the crystal with cosmic glue. Terror lurks in him. 

_It's okay,_ Jeff thinks as the skin on his arms pricks into gooseflesh. Kent's magic is powerful, and it calls to him. _Stop running. It's okay to stop. It's okay to hurt._

When he's done, the amber reverberates with the song of the universe, so logical and wild. Light pours out of it, bright like the sun, and Jeff has to shield his eyes when he looks at Kent. 

Kent bends down and pries the doe's mouth open, slips the amber in on its tongue. He joins Jeff in the easternly triangle and when he reaches down to touch the salt, the world ignites around them.

They stand there in their fiery cage, too cold and too hot all at the same time, and watch the doe warp and twist in the flame. 

When Kent leans against his shoulder, Jeff lifts his arm and pulls him in close. 

Jeff thinks maybe he's doing a bad job of convincing. 

. . .

Jeff wakes the next morning to find Kent sitting on the edge of his mattress, looking out the window. 

"Hey," he croaks, and turns over in bed so he can face Kent.

"I don't want to go back," Kent says. He sounds fierce, determined. "I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to do that life anymore." 

"Kent," Jeff whispers, and touches his leg, but Kent rockets to his feet and leaves Jeff's room without another word. 

Jeff sighs. 

They eat breakfast together, some oatmeal Jeff unearths from the cellar. 

"I'm worried about the plants," he says. "And whatever you're doing to the thermostat." 

Kent looks startled. "What's wrong with the thermostat?"

"Well," Jeff says. "Maybe not the thermostat. But it thinks it's nearly 70 inside and—"

Kent stands up and goes to check. "Am I doing that?" he asks when he comes back to the table. "It's freezing in here. I just thought I didn't know how to read the dial." 

"Your magic is going nuts," Jeff says gently. "The plants are one thing, but the pond…"

Kent breaks. He sits down hard on the couch and looks at his hands and Jeff shoves away from the kitchen table and goes to him.

"It's okay. It happens to everyone at some point. Not usually so pronounced but… you're you." 

Jeff puts a hand on Kent's fist and squeezes. Slowly, Kent's hand unclenches and he threads his fingers with Jeff's. 

"Kit," Kent says, and puts his other hand over his face. "Oh, shit." 

Jeff rubs his thumb over Kent's. "She's a part of your magic." 

"Okay," Kent says, and there's a steeliness there where it hadn't been before. He turns to look at Jeff. His eyes are determined. Bright. "But I'm not going back."

Later, Kent goes around the house and touches all of the plants, whispers to them too quiet for Jeff to hear. He spends a lot of time on the porch, wrapped up in Jeff's big coat, and Jeff can feel the way his magic reaches out into the world, looking for all the things that have been buried by his neglect. The feel of Kent's magic like that, sweeping and tender, makes Jeff shiver. 

"You're leaving tomorrow," Kent says over dinner.

"No." Jeff doesn't know what he's going to do. He's not leaving, but he can't _not_ leave. He has a life, a job—a job he _loves,_ with people he's proud to know counting on him—he has things other than Kent. He wants to say _I'm not going anywhere_ , but it sticks in his throat.

Kent looks at him.

"I don't want to leave you," Jeff says. 

Kent swallows. "You could always stay."

Kent says it offhand, Jeff knows it, but there's a small vulnerability in it that is so, so serious. 

Beneath the table, Kit winds between his legs.

. . .

They wake up the next morning to a blizzard. 

"Well," Kent says, as they stand together, looking out the big picture window in the living room. Snow whips across the mountain. It reaches up and over the nose of Jeff's rental car. 

Jeff turns and looks at him, and there's something in Kent's eyes that wasn't there before. Something scared and vulnerable. Mother nature has thrown a wrench in Kent's carefully crafted seclusion. To Kent, Jeff was a tourist, here for a brief moment. Now he's stuck. Stuck with Kent. It's not so bad a prospect. 

"Two more days?" Jeff says, wry.

"I'm not going back," Kent says. "Not in two days, not in a year."

They watch the storm together in silence. 

"I guess I owe you an explanation why," Kent says.

 _You don't owe me anything_ , Jeff thinks. _You've given me so much._

"Okay," he says instead. While Kent takes the time to make his argument, Jeff can still try. 

They take a walk after the storm dies down, their boots leaving crisp footprints in the snow. Kent takes him around the property and points out the little dens he can feel sleepy foxes curled up in, the places where prime flows the strongest. There's a perfect circular clearing in the woods on the other side of the pond that opens up to the big bright sky. When they step into the hole of trees it's like standing on a mirror.

They sit on a big rock and catch their breath.

"Thank you for coming to find me," Kent says, and he presses his cheek into Jeff's shoulder. 

"Tell me why you ran," Jeff whispers. 

Kent sits up again and looks at his hands. He's wearing Jeff's gloves, pink and green and yellow, hand knitted by Jeff's sister-in-law. 

"I didn't want it anymore," he says simply. "And it was killing me." 

To some, this would seem a touch dramatic. But Jeff remembers the plants, remembers the awful sick thing in the pond. He expects to feel pity, but something like pride blooms fragrant in his chest.

"So what do you want now?"

"I don't know. Something else. Something better." Kent looks away, and Jeff touches his face, brushes his fingers against Kent's cheekbone. Sometimes it's good to be chased. Jeff knows the double-edged nature of loneliness. Jeff can see the struggle in Kent's eyes a thousand miles away. He pulls away from Jeff's touch.

"Kent," Jeff says. "It's okay."

"I want to grow—potatoes," Kent says. "I want to eat like a normal human again for a fucking minute. I want to stop being the person kids think they should want to be."

Jeff puts his hand on the back of Kent's neck and this time Kent doesn't pull away. 

"I want to have kids." Kent's voice is a whisper, ethereally loud in the plane of ice around them. "I want to go to their spelling bees. I want to call out sick and check them out of school and go to the park just because." He leans heavily into Jeff's hand. "I want my body to stop hurting all the god damn time." 

He looks at Jeff with dark eyes. 

"I want _more_." 

This time, when Jeff moves his hand and touches Kent's cheek, Kent doesn't shake it off. He presses their foreheads together while Jeff's heart stutters in his chest. He breathes against Jeff's cheek, warm and comforting. 

Kent moves a little and his mouth is in front of Jeff's, parted, still, searching. 

Jeff thinks about the croton all the way up the hill in the kitchen, thinks of the amber full of prime and light, and tilts his chin up.

Kent makes a little sound when Jeff kisses him, so small and needy. Jeff presses into him, puts his hands on Kent's waist and pulls him close. 

"You deserve all of that," he says when they part. 

When Jeff looks down, the snow under their feet has changed. There's an icy starburst around them, some shining primal pattern that sings with Jeff's magic and Kent's. 

Jeff strokes his hand along Kent's spine, rhythmic and soothing.

"Potatoes?"

Kent shrugs. "They seem easy." 

For all Jeff wants it, the problem isn't solved. It isn't solved when they get up from the rock, it isn't solved when they go into the house and make a pot of bitter coffee. It isn't solved when they lie down, curled around each other on the couch, trading shy kisses that make Jeff feel like he's 15 again. 

"What now?" Kent says eventually, his head on Jeff's chest. 

"I think I'm being selfish," Jeff says. He strokes his fingers through Kent's hair. He never wants to stop touching him. "But I can't help but hate the idea of you being so far away and alone."

"I have Kit," Kent says.

"It's not the same." Jeff traces the shell of Kent's ear with his thumb and Kent shivers, buries his face in the flannel of Jeff's shirt. "You could come back. You don't have to play."

Kent lifts himself up on his elbows and looks down at him. "How do you not hate being there? In the desert?"

Jeff can't answer him. 

"You're a free agent this year," Kent says. "The Caps will take you." 

Jeff yearns with uncertain desire. 

"D.C.'s still five hours away from here." 

"I'll find somewhere closer." An eager hope shines in Kent's eyes. "West Virginia." 

"This is crazy," Jeff whispers. He's really thinking about changing his entire life to follow Kent's lunacy. Kent, who he just kissed for the very first time in a circle older than either of them. Jeff's grandmother would be laughing herself sick right now. 

The light dies; Kent pulls away into himself. 

"I didn't say no," Jeff says. "Don't do that. Don't hide from me again." 

Kent looks at him and takes a deep breath, drops his head and exhales violently into Jeff's chest. "You're right, though. You're right." 

Jeff makes up his mind between one second and the next.

"You have to go back," Jeff says, and every muscle in Kent's body locks up. "Listen. You have to go back. They're going to sue you. Finish the season. Negotiate an early exit from your contract. Just a little longer, then you can rest." 

Kent shakes in his arms, and Jeff refuses to let go. "I'll take care of you," he says, and presses a kiss to the crown of Kent's hair. 

Whatever Kent says is muffled in Jeff's shirt, but he gets the gist.

"I promise," Jeff says. He holds on tight. 

. . .

They lock up the cabin and drop Jeff's rental off at the nearest Hertz. Kit yowls at him from where she's tucked between the pothos and the croton when Jeff slides into the passenger seat of Kent's car.

"Hush," Kent tells her, and she settles with a flick of her tail and a scornful glare. "She hates driving." 

"Because you're so bad at it," Jeff says, and leans across the center console to kiss him. When he pulls away, Kent looks up at him like he's not entirely sure he's not dreaming. Like someone isn't going to come and take Jeff away. 

"Four months," Jeff says. "Maybe less." 

Kent's grip tightens on the steering wheel, then loosens. "Four months," he whispers. 

They drive. 

**Author's Note:**

> [tu](http://bazanite.tumblr.com)


End file.
